Child of Fire

agony.

The ghost knife struck the back of his neck. A jet of flame burst out of the cut like steam escaping a ruptured pipe. Flames engulfed his head, and the jet of fire lost pressure, falling short of the baby wheel. It hadn’t ignited.

His whole head burning, Hammer fell backward. He did not scream, although I imagined he very much wanted to.

I sprinted along the causeway. The huge wheel stared down at me. As I ran past the silver wire, the pain in my iron gate grew. It was reaching out to me, trying to destroy me. Only Annalise’s spell held it at bay.

I leaped off the walkway and started bounding across the rocks. The pain eased as I put some distance between the silver wire and me. I reached the slab where Hammer had been standing.

He was lying on his back, wedged between two stones. As I watched, his skin turned from scorched and blackened to pink and healthy. I thought how much I wished Annalise could do the same, and I hated him all the more.

“Oh, God,” he gasped, as though he’d been holding his breath. “No more.”

“What a fantastic idea,” I said. I slid down the slab of stone and landed on his chest with both knees. I pulled the silver letter opener from my pocket.

“No!” Hammer screamed. He struggled, his arms flailing and batting at me, his legs scrabbling against the stones. I grabbed his arms and held them down.

His eyes rolled back in his head. He took a deep breath.

I jammed the silver blade under his chin into his brain.

He bucked twice. No jet of fire came out of him. He fell still and silent. He was dead.

I stood, leaving the letter opener in place. He didn’t heal and he didn’t wake up. I had guessed correctly. The wheel couldn’t exert its power over him while he had the silver inside him.

At least, I hoped it couldn’t. The silver ring that enclosed the wheel of fire was not enough to keep its immense power in check. I didn’t know how long the knife would hold him.

I could have turned him over and destroyed his iron gate but decided against it. What would that have accomplished except to allow the wheel to erase his memory?

I looked up at it. I felt very small beside that terrible creature.

“Can you understand me?” I said. Don’t talk to the targets, Annalise had told me, but I couldn’t resist. “Can you understand? Can you see the future? Can you control it?”

Yes.

It was not a sound, it was a pressure against my iron gate and my mind at the same time. I felt sick and small, like an ant who sees a boot moving above him.

“Can you make me do what you want, the way you controlled all those parents and toy shoppers?”

There was no answer this time. I took that as a no.

I walked across the rocks toward the hoop Hammer had stood in. It was connected to the main ring by a second silver wire.

“What do I have to do to get you to control the future for me? Do I have to be inside the silver hoop?”

Yes.

“Well, then,” I said, “that’s some sad luck for you, you great big bitch.”

I held up my hand. My ghost knife flew into it like a bird returning to its nest. I bent down and cut the silver wire that connected the wheel’s binding circle to the hoop, then I cut the other wire that led through the tunnel to the tower. I didn’t see any more wires.

Immediately, the pressure against my iron gate eased. I had isolated the wheel, partially reducing the power it could bring to bear on the world outside its silver ring. Hopefully, with the wire cut and the silver blade wedged in Hammer’s body, the predator wouldn’t be able to heal him again.

I climbed back over the rocks to the baby wheel. Tiny worms wriggled sluggishly in a circle. It was not ready to be born. Maybe our attack on Charles Hammer had rushed the birth process, forcing the wheel to turn the spirit fire on it before it was ready. It didn’t matter now.

I held out the ghost knife, letting the crawling worms cut themselves on the edge of the spell. The worms broke apart, falling to the stones like windblown ash. I yanked my hand away from the tiny gouts of flame that erupted. Thankfully, the fire did not spread.

I felt a great, mournful wail wash through me. It was not something I could hear, but it seemed to fill me nonetheless. I was murdering the wheel’s unborn child, and it couldn’t do anything but watch.

It took a while to finish the job. There were thousands of worms, but I could kill four or five with a quick swipe of my arm. I could have struck more, but I didn’t want to throw my spell in case the wheel could catch it somehow, and I didn’t want to let the little worms touch my skin.

I felt the predator behind me trying to exert its will over me. It didn’t work. Cutting the wires had limited the amount of power it could use outside the ring. Still, the iron gate on my chest throbbed and ached.

The baby wheel shrank as I killed it. Eventually, it was reduced to the point that the inner hole vanished and it became a disk. When that happened, the remaining worms fell apart and died on the stones around me.

I was hungry. I was thirsty. I wanted to get the hell away from Hammer Bay. I didn’t know how far I would have to drive before the sigil on my chest stopped throbbing, but I was willing to gas up and find out.

The wheel of fire looming above me really was out of my league. I didn’t even want to look at it. I’d collect